I don't see myself as a brand - Vidya Balan

Very few actresses in our industry today command the star power to carry a film on their shoulders. Vidya Balan is definitely one of them. The actress has proved her mettle time and again by delivering hits with women centric movies like Kahaani and The Dirty Picture. The latter catapulted her to unimagined levels of success making Vidya a brand to reckon with, putting her right up there with the Khans. Vidya though remains her modest self and refuses to see herself as a brand in Bollywood today. "I don’t think of myself as a brand, really. I only see myself as an actor. In my opinion, image building is very limiting for the artist in me. Once you build an image, then you try to do everything for the sake of maintaining that image. I don’t want that to happen to me. I think being an actor is far more important." What helps Vidya hone the actress inside her is the freedom that she has received till date, something that has continued even after marriage. Says Vidya, "Even marriage has not changed anything as far as my liberty to choose the kind of films I want to do is concerned. Siddharth (Roy Kapoor) and I respect the passion we have for each other’s work. Though Siddharth understands cinematic sensibilities, I don’t really grasp the business of cinema that well." Let more power come your way, Vidya.